Slashdot Mirror

There is another issue. Games must sell well in stores if those stores are going to keep them on the shelves. This means that in addition to shelf space, a game company needs massive advertising all over their target countries. This is a huge additional cost, and requires different and equally dedicated staff.

Steam can change this. Since the distribution cost (mostly bandwidth as opposed to physical production and shipping) scales with the number of sales, Valve can afford to act as a distributor for games that might only sell a hundred copies. Good examples of this happening in the retail industry are www.cafepress.com and www.lulu.com. This means that a small game company can write a simple game, advertise a little, contract with Valve to distribute it, and maybe sell enough to break even. This lets small game companies develop. And that's how Steam can change the gaming industry.

Not sure what all this service does for you or what chunk they'll want to take, but check out Lulu.

"Learning by Doing: Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA) Lab Manual Version 4 Volumes 1 and 2" by Matthew Basham published and sold by lulu.com - http://www.lulu.com/content/72105.

and found this book I might actually buy:

Living in Vertical Time
by Brian Narelle
Description: The Teachings of Murray the Buru. These ruminations on life, love and peace were inspired by a donkey named Murray, a special soul housed in a 600 pound body. My friend, my teacher...my '"buru". (104 pages)

and some well known guys have published through these guys

I would love to see a similar idea for books and print media. Printing/binding on request would save a LOT of storage and manufacturing costs, even if it does increase the cost of maufacturing each book.

Something like Lulu or iUniverse should probably be possible to set up nearly some large book store. It wouldn't be as fast as burning a CD but probably doable in some reasonable time.

"I wrote a novel, it just hasn't been published yet." ... filled the last chapter with "lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu" to meet the word count.

Funny that you should mention "lu lu lu," as ANYONE can publish on Lulu.

And when you're done with your novel you can publish it on Lulu. I think Lulu is a fantastic idea, and I hope they don't go out of business.

This is off-topic: I've followed your link to iUniverse (quite frankly I thought that it was a link to some book by David Brin, posted as a joke). I'm starting to write a book which I am going to self-publish using one of those print-on-demand services. It's a lot of time but I want to be up to date with different options. So far I was considering mostly Lulu or CafePress. Lately I've found also Zazzle which seems nice for printing artwork but there are no books yet. Generally instead of looking for those services myself I just save links to those which I find others using. Could you please tell me why would you personally suggest iUniverse instead of Lulu or CafePress, for both the cheapest options possible as well as standard books with ISBN and everything? Have you used them yourself? Thanks.

Whether or not we can agree on a successful business model in Anderson's predictions, the events he describes are indeed coming to pass. The market for content is dissolving.

Last year, according to R.R. Bowker http://www.bowker.com/press/2004_0527_bowker.htm, 175,000 book titles were published in the US alone. That's more than any other year in history, and it doesn't even include all the titles being published without ISBNs through outfits like Lulu http://www.lulu.com/, which gives authors the option to distribute directly. And yet, the same report notes that sales of books are down. Why? More content; less consolidated sales.

This is bad news for big publishers and for brick and mortar retailers, whose profits have always relied upon the 80/20 rule described in the Wired article. It's good news, on the other hand, for authors (and bands and game designers, etc.) who are hoping for a sliver of the marketplace that they might not otherwise have gotten.

Lulu, where I work, currently sees over 50 new titles published a day by authors hoping for the attention of a few readers. That number is growing all the time. Most of these authors won't sell very many books. But the money being spent on books by the book-buying public is being divided into many more slices.

"How am I going to get rich if I only sell 100 books?" complains a typical author.

Well, the truth is that getting rich as an author has always been a bit like winning the lottery. The world can support very few Stephen Kings. But it can support an almost infinite number of Cory Doctorows http://www.craphound.com/down/ or Tucker Maxes http://www.tuckermax.com/. The publishing world (and I include music) is more democratic, but it's also less glamorous.

If you have content-- and people will always be compelled to generate more content, for better or worse -- in the digital world it costs you nothing to put it out there and hang a price tag on it (Lulu and CafePress are good examples). If it's out there, and it's valuable to someone, eventually it will sell. The economics of that marketplace, on the other hand, are not those of the publishing industry as it now exists.

(This is a shameless plug, but it's on-topic, honest!) If you hurry you may be able to buy a rare first edition of What is Music? (Solving a Scientific Mystery) . How rare is it? The proof for the second edition is in the post, and once I receive the proof and see it's OK and advertise it for sale, the first edition will be withdrawn from sale (forever!). If my theory turns out to be correct, then first editions of the book are sure to acquire significant value as a collectible.

I can't offer fixed odds (so to speak), as the rarity and value of the first edition will be a function of how many people buy it (it's POD). But you can read about the theory on the website and in the preview, and make up your own mind, decide for yourself, etc. You can also get a very indirect indication of how many copies have already been sold by looking at the Lulu Sales Rank.

I'll take a stab at a few of these questions.

>>There is no such thing as a free lunch, so what cost does this "self-publishing" have?

If we are talking about Lulu.com in particular, there are no specific costs involved on the publishing side, apart from the effort required to put together a publishable book (which is considerable). That said, an author would be well-advised to pay for editing, proofreading, typesetting, and cover art prior to publishing the book. But many authors manage to do all of this themselves, and to do a decent job (Basham, for example). If an author wants expanded distribution, he/she should also purchase ISBN assigment for $150, which will get the book listed on retail sites such as Amazon.com. Lulu.com's 20% commission comes from sales of the book, not from charging the author/publisher.

>>What kind of accuracy and quality can lulu.com ensure?

None.

>>What does it actually cost the student/reader if this material is not accurate and they go to get certified and have been possibly mislead by one man's material?

The marketplace is a pretty good judge when it comes to this kind of thing. A bad CISCO certification book is not likely to sell very well. In Basham's case, he actually gives away the electronic version for free, so it's pretty easy to evaluate. But there is always risk when you buy something. I'm told aphrodisiacs sell pretty well on the web, too.

>>What does it cost the student (or their school lab resources) to print out this "free" book of 500 to 800 pages to gain the full benefit of a textbook ? (i.e. having the ability to read offline, highlight, etc. is still a tangible benefit of printed books)

Of course, one of the nifty things about Lulu.com is that you can buy an actual printed book (bound and all), so you don't have to print it out yourself. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that any students who are printing out 800 page PDFs are probably doing so either at school or at work. So perhaps a better question would be, how much is it costing employers and institutions? The cost of a bound 800-page book through Lulu.com is likely to be upwards of $20, depending on what royalty the author has set on the book.

>>What real costs do ambitious people like Mr. Basham incur to get their material published--read the fine print on lulu.com services and/or just track what it takes in personal time & $$ to write, edit, review, format, proofread, and dissemninate this material)?

A better question for Matt Basham. I'm sure he spent an enormous amount of time putting together the book. He is paid by the school at which he teaches, however, and all the publicity he has garnered will be good for the school program.

>>What more does a commercial publisher provide than lulu.com?

Good question. Conventional publishers provide, in addition to a sophisticated distribution mechanism, marketing. And marketing is key. Publishing through Lulu.com means that an author/publisher must do his own marketing. But having pointed that out, I have yet to find a conventionally published author who was happy with the marketing his publishing company provided for his book. Marketing is expensive and frequently unsuccessful. Lulu.com as a publishing tool (and, in a larger sense, the web itself as a distribution tool) provides a means by which the marketplace can access a work and determine its worth on its own, in a democratic fashion, as opposed to being told what is valuable by marketers with deep pockets. Because publishing through Lulu.com doesn't require the big investment (risk) required by conventional publishing, then there is less pressure to succeed, which allows more books with smaller potential readerships to reach the marketplace. That's good for both authors and readers.

>>Is l

The price difference that a bookstore takes is also greater than you suggest. We deal with many, many bookstores --college and otherwise--every day. The typical bookstore requests a significant discount on books when ordering from a supplier like us. When there is a third intermediary (distributor), the distributor and the bookstore generally have to try to split a 50-55% discount among themselves. The other 45-50% of the 'jacket' price of the book has to be split between the manufacturer, the publisher, and the author.

To use one specific example, in the case of the most popular college textbook published through Lulu.com, the college bookstores buy the book directly from Lulu at a 38% discount from the cover price. Because Lulu.com doesn't accept returns (the limitation of print on demand technology), the bookstore also assumes the risk for any books that go unsold. The bookstore buys the books at $12.89 per book and sells them to students at $17.75 for a new copy. They also sell used copies.

Again, please don't misunderstand. I'm not questioning the right of bookstores to make money--they make little enough of it as it is--just elucidating the elements of the costs so as to make for a more informed discussion.

I would challenge the notion that there is a distinct category of books that are self-published. To some extent the categories of publisher and self-publisher are anachronistic.

I've made the argument that there is no such thing as self-publishing in more detail elsewhere, but to summarize:

• Many independent publishers publish the work of a small number of writers.

• Many writers establish "publishing companies" to distribute their own work.

• And at this point, technologies like Lulu.com make publishing accessible to anyone and everyone.

The real difference, insomuch as there is a difference, is in the branding. O'Reilly, for example, has a brand that information seekers trust. So an O'Reilly book by an author you've never heard of is probably more appealing than a Lulu.com book by an author you've never heard of. But what if an author develops his own brand?

Along those lines, last week I found myself in the middle of a back-and-forth with a prominent tech journalist. His position was in essence that most of what is written is crap and that the editorial control exercised by publishers is essential. Fair enough. Most of what's written is crap, (although that doesn't seem to stop people from buying it when it's put out by major publishers).

But the dilemma you allude to, as I see it, is comparable to the dilemma presented by the emergence of the World Wide Web itself. "If anyone can put up anything on the Web," railed skeptics, "the whole thing is going to be useless. If you can't find the worthwhile information in the mountains of rotten information, what good will it be?"

Venerable institutions like the New York Times (justifiably) shuddered that individual sites--Matt Drudge's, for example--could compete with their own as sources for information. And yet, it has come to be. The Internet provides the means by which authors can develop their own brands. Matt Basham (the CISCO prof), for example, is in the process of developing his.

I would challenge the notion that there is a distinct category of books that are self-published. To some extent the categories of publisher and self-publisher are anachronistic.

I've made the argument that there is no such thing as self-publishing in more detail elsewhere, but to summarize:

• Many independent publishers publish the work of a small number of writers.

• Many writers establish "publishing companies" to distribute their own work.

• And at this point, technologies like Lulu.com make publishing accessible to anyone and everyone.

The real difference, insomuch as there is a difference, is in the branding. O'Reilly, for example, has a brand that information seekers trust. So an O'Reilly book by an author you've never heard of is probably more appealing than a Lulu.com book by an author you've never heard of. But what if an author develops his own brand?

Along those lines, last week I found myself in the middle of a back-and-forth with a prominent tech journalist. His position was in essence that most of what is written is crap and that the editorial control exercised by publishers is essential. Fair enough. Most of what's written is crap, (although that doesn't seem to stop people from buying it when it's put out by major publishers).

But the dilemma you allude to, as I see it, is comparable to the dilemma presented by the emergence of the World Wide Web itself. "If anyone can put up anything on the Web," railed skeptics, "the whole thing is going to be useless. If you can't find the worthwhile information in the mountains of rotten information, what good will it be?"

Venerable institutions like the New York Times (justifiably) shuddered that individual sites--Matt Drudge's, for example--could compete with their own as sources for information. And yet, it has come to be. The Internet provides the means by which authors can develop their own brands. Matt Basham (the CISCO prof), for example, is in the process of developing his.

To some extent I can speak for Bob Young on this subject--the pricing situation with textbooks was very much the impetus for him to start Lulu.com. We are all in agreement on the problem.

The other thing I would point out is that it's actually the college bookstores that prevent the textbook publishers from offering downloads of textbooks. Believe it or not, they're acting the villain in this saga to some extent by pressuring the publishers not to disintermediate sales (I think that's the right word--but you get the idea).

To some extent I can speak for Bob Young on this subject--the pricing situation with textbooks was very much the impetus for him to start Lulu.com. We are all in agreement on the problem.

The other thing I would point out is that it's actually the college bookstores that prevent the textbook publishers from offering downloads of textbooks. Believe it or not, they're acting the villain in this saga to some extent by pressuring the publishers not to disintermediate sales (I think that's the right word--but you get the idea).

The Lulu.com business model is based on a 20% commission on sales. Exact production costs vary depending on the number of pages and delivery format (electronic versions obviously have no production cost), but in all cases authors set their own royalty: they receive that royalty amount for every sale regardless of the production cost or Lulu commission.

The cost of a printed book to a customer who buys it is:
$4.53, the base cost for a perfect-bound printed book, + (# of pages x $.02 per page) + author royalty + Lulu commission

For downloads, the cost is simply the author royalty + Lulu commission. If the author royalty is $4, the Lulu commission would be $1, and the cost to the customer for the book would be $5.

By the way, Basham's Lulu.com storefront is here: www.lulu.com/learningbydoing

If you use the other link provided in this article then you can download the latest version as a pdf... duh...

Upshot? A review on slashdot was my biggest promotional score, and total readership appears to be about 10,000 worldwide. Tip jar revenue ended up a bit over $1,000. And despite many mails and posts telling me it was a very good novel, I still can't attract a publisher.

It just isn't as easy as it looks.

Unfortunately there was no POD publisher available at the time that had low setup fees. I lost much time trying for conventional publication again and now that it's available on dead trees from lulu.com the wave of interest has passed and I haven't sold many copies.

However, because of all the interest I am working on a sequel (which I'd have never considered before) and when it's ready I will introduce it online and via Lulu at the same time. Hopefully that will let the impulse shoppers grab a copy while it's fresh in their minds. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

No, they're not worth hundreds of dollars, because lulu will do it for free. There are still some kinks in their process, but they have pretty good customer support and a great attitude.

Check out Bob Young's (yes, that Bob Young's) Lulu service. No setup fees.

I'm not sure why more people haven't head of http://www.lulu.com/
It's a great service and I've used it already to publish a small book to give to family members.

Lulu Enterprises is the latest venture of Red Hat, co-founder and open source enthusiast Bob Young. Lulu.com allows anyone to publish and sell digital files--including books, artwork, and photographs--over the Internet.

Publishing work on Lulu.com is free, and content creators are asked to establish a royalty fee for each item they upload.

Lulu's revenue model is based on receiving a small percentage of each content purchase, as well as on fees for a line of planned additional services, such as editing and formatting.

..to move all your music over to
Lulu.com
It's free and you have control over storefronts and distribution and much more. I'm diggin' it.

don't forget
Lulu.com
They seem to have their stuff together, they're free. They treat their users great, and they allow you more control over the way your stuff is distributed. They're worth checking into.

What Happens When a Linux Geek Takes Over a Canadian Football Team ?

* Bob Young, founder of Red Hat and Lulu.com buys Canadian football team the Hamilton Ticats.
* Ticats playbook submitted to SourceForge for development. Fans of the Canadian Football League are invited to submit revisions.
* Initially puzzled by open source strategy, other CFL teams begin using the plays.
* Ticats adopt open-channel Wi-Fi for communications between coaches and quarterbacks using new helmet developed under the GPL, known as the GNU-Helmet. Xs and Os on playbook diagrams are replaced with 1s and 0s. Fans begin to show up at games with laptops to IM the assistant coaches.
* Ticats playbook becomes bestseller .
* First season is devoted to eliminating bugs. Bob Young called an eccentric, fringe player. Headline screams "Playbook Bazaar -- Bizarre!"
* Innovation in CFL play explodes. Stadiums host record crowds. US newspapers run stories, but most assume that the sport in question is actually soccer.
* Bill Gates surprises press by purchasing Seattle Seahawks.
* In the third season, CFL continues to gain momentum. Young brokers a revolutionary agreement with the Australian Football League incorporating new rules and tactics. Games become more interesting. Cable channel TechTV signs contract to air every CFL game. US viewers begin to abandon NFL games in droves.
* NFL sues, claiming a process patent on option plays
* Clear-Channel takes over 90% of US stadiums and inks 10-year contract with NFL. Fans are routinely strip-searched for illicit food and drink items as they enter stadiums.
* Gates responds to decrease in attendance at games by inking broadcast deal with all four networks to air games simultaneously.
* Canada announces increase in immigration. MIT Beavers win Division Championship.
* Electronic Arts announces that "Madden NFL 2007" will be open source. Furor erupts. New version quickly surfaces in which characters can be forced to play soccer.
* NYT article notes that enrollment in youth football programs across North America are up, as are demands for reinforced padding and elastic straps for eyeglasses. 'Football is all about brains!" bellow coaches.
* 2010 - Ticats win Grey Cup for the first time in decades. Average size of defensive lineman is 5'7", 155 lbs.

What Happens When a Linux Geek Takes Over a Canadian Football Team ?

* Bob Young, founder of Red Hat and Lulu.com buys Canadian football team the Hamilton Ticats.
* Ticats playbook submitted to SourceForge for development. Fans of the Canadian Football League are invited to submit revisions.
* Initially puzzled by open source strategy, other CFL teams begin using the plays.
* Ticats adopt open-channel Wi-Fi for communications between coaches and quarterbacks using new helmet developed under the GPL, known as the GNU-Helmet. Xs and Os on playbook diagrams are replaced with 1s and 0s. Fans begin to show up at games with laptops to IM the assistant coaches.
* Ticats playbook becomes bestseller .
* First season is devoted to eliminating bugs. Bob Young called an eccentric, fringe player. Headline screams "Playbook Bazaar -- Bizarre!"
* Innovation in CFL play explodes. Stadiums host record crowds. US newspapers run stories, but most assume that the sport in question is actually soccer.
* Bill Gates surprises press by purchasing Seattle Seahawks.
* In the third season, CFL continues to gain momentum. Young brokers a revolutionary agreement with the Australian Football League incorporating new rules and tactics. Games become more interesting. Cable channel TechTV signs contract to air every CFL game. US viewers begin to abandon NFL games in droves.
* NFL sues, claiming a process patent on option plays
* Clear-Channel takes over 90% of US stadiums and inks 10-year contract with NFL. Fans are routinely strip-searched for illicit food and drink items as they enter stadiums.
* Gates responds to decrease in attendance at games by inking broadcast deal with all four networks to air games simultaneously.
* Canada announces increase in immigration. MIT Beavers win Division Championship.
* Electronic Arts announces that "Madden NFL 2007" will be open source. Furor erupts. New version quickly surfaces in which characters can be forced to play soccer.
* NYT article notes that enrollment in youth football programs across North America are up, as are demands for reinforced padding and elastic straps for eyeglasses. 'Football is all about brains!" bellow coaches.
* 2010 - Ticats win Grey Cup for the first time in decades. Average size of defensive lineman is 5'7", 155 lbs.

If everyone started downloading legal music instead, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs from indie bands, and seeing their shows, instead of enriching the major labels every time you buy a Britney or New Kids CD. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads are not copyright violations because the artists give you permission to download them.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com . See especially their genre index . Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet ?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

There are better sites for hosting MP3s than MP3.com. Some of them allow you to buy the band's CD from the same page as the MP3 download. Among them are The Internet Underground Music Archives, CDBaby, Epitonic.com, Lulu, SoundClick, Matador Records and insound .

Monotonik provides BitTorrents with zip files containing 60 to 100 MP3s apiece available here.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here . Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b] .

Unfortunately, musicians are often not very good website designers, so poor usability is a significant obstacle to getting music directly from artists' websites. If you're a musician, and you'd like to know how you can improve your website so more people will download your music, please read my article If Indie Musicians Wanted Their Music Heard....

Finally, there is the problem of finding the music that's actually worth listening to. The labels do serve the (somewhat) legitimate purpose of picking out the good from the bad. But we can do that ourselves with legal downloads by using collaborative filtering, for example by downloading our music with iRATE, which you'll find at

This is a nice idea, and one way to approach things. I'm just not positive that it's effective.

The RIAA won against Verizon in court, and can now request IP addys, logs, and user contact info. So, this doesn't really slow them in that sense.

Additionally, what's to stop the RIAA from getting a bunch of DHCP home accounts under a subsidiary's name instead of their own? The possibilities for playing catch up here to add more IP ranges are endless.

This is a neat little effort, but doesn't fix the greater problem of balance in copyright law/infringement/fair-use.

It's the proverbial finger in the hole in the dam.

Lulu.com- publish your stuff! Creative commons compliant.

The artist has to invest in a huge amount of CD manufacturing to send off to CDBaby in the hopes that they'll sell.

At LuluMUSIC the artist uploads their work for free, sets the royalty and price they want to recieve, and are done. No upfront costs to them, and they have control over pricing and licensing. Want to use the Founder's Copyright instead of the traditional current copyright? Go right ahead.

So, Apple is going to get indie labels. Good for them. Matador and SubPop are relatively large anyway, and they don't do much to help the artist financially.

emusic is fine and well, presuming you can bet they have enough music you'll like to justify a subscription. Most folks can't.

Lulu.com started by Bob Young formerly of RedHat actually empowers the artist. The artist gets to decide what distribution format to sell in, set their own price, and set their own royalty. The artist also gets to decide if they want to use the Founder's Copyright or any other license instead of traditional copyright.

It's putting the artist back in control of their work, something Apple hasn't considered. Apple just does the same thing as Sam Goody's or Tower, only over the internet. Big deal. The only nice thing they've got with it is the iTunes integration.

This is Tucker-fuckin-Max we're talking about. He's not just some guy, he's the self-proclaimed God's gift to women. I don't know about that, but he is damn funny and if you haven't purchased his new book you damn well should.

Collaboration is a good thing. It's the foundation of things like the Free Software movement, and Open Source movement. It's how performers make good music.

Arguably, it also produces a lot of trash, but hey, there's a market for that, too.

The interesting thing here is that O'Reilly is taking this up with Gillmor. Not everyone can get published by O'Reilly, so what's a regular guy to do?

Use Lulu.com, a new site founded by Bob Young, formerly of RedHat. You register as an author, and your collaborators register as an author, and you can all submit chapters to each other's books for collaboration. Then you can set price for online, print, or cd distribution, collecting an 80% royalty. No other publishing deal I know of sets an 80% royalty to the author.

Or choose no royalty and set the price for online distribution to free. Books can be published under any license you like, just place the copyright page with the license you like in the book when you upload it.

LULU.COM